I spent my first night with T10's 4 piece set bonus last night, and I think it was a little bit of a disappointment. The hot accounted for about 3% of my effective healing for the night, which is way less than in some of the parses I'd seen. I think that it's possible that the fights I happened to be healing for last night were generally not chain heal friendly, and I was also mostly tank healing as the other healer was a druid.
I will be more excited to see my stats from tomorrow, when we will be doing Blood Queen, the fight that was built expressly for Chain Heal spam.
Still, I think I probably will be building 2 sets, one for Chain Heal centric fights, and one for Tank healing fights. I have generally resisted building multiple healing sets in the past, due to bag space, and general laziness, but I think the set bonuses and relic effects have become so specific these days that it may still be necessary.
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Monday, February 8, 2010
Back to the Chain of Healing Bloggers
Jessabelle is revisiting the meme that riveted the healing blog world, and asking past participants to revisit their answers with a few questions, to see how our opinions of our class have changed, both with experience, and with the content that has been released since then.
My original answers are here, for reference.
1. Reread your original answers to the questions. With the benefit of hindsight, score your own work in terms of its cringeworthiness.
Hmm, I think when I look back on past-Zigi, I think "geez, you and Chain Heal should get a room already". Sure it's a great spell still, and probably still class-defining, but it was also made nearly unusable in many of the fights of the first wing of ICC. Spreading out on fights like Saurfang meant that your CH would often hit only one target, making it useless. In general, you're going to be spread out on other fights like Blood Princes, Failboat, and Marrowgar too. It's useless on Valithria of course, who isn't in your raid so won't get hit by it. It's still amazing on fights like Festergut and Blood Queen, but it certainly has struck out on a lot of ICC fights for me. This is especially painful as my totem and glyph are just wasted on these fights by association, but I'm too cheap to replace them for just those fights.
2. Has your class's healing improved in the area you identified as its weakest?
I identified mana usage as the biggest weakness, and when we were just beginning TOC I was living on my mana tide and potions. My gear has gotten a lot better since then, and there is a lot more raid damage (HELLOOO Blood Queen) giving me nearly limitless mana from my water shield.
What I would identify as our biggest weakness now is our lack of mobile healing. We have one spell to cast while moving (and don't get me wrong, I want to have Riptide's babies\), so when Riptide is on cooldown and you need to run off a nasty debuff, then you're kinda not doing anything for 6 seconds, eh?
3. Have you changed your "least favoured class to heal with"?
I selfishly said holy priests, because they don't offer any buffs for me personally that a disc priest doesn't provide. I like holy priests a lot more since a lot of them now take the Glyph of Guardian Spirit, which is an amazing talent. I have set foot in a few more 25 man raids, and I do realize now that it is a headache to have more than one disc priest, as they're constantly weakened-soul-blocking each other, without careful coordination.
4. Did you read the entries from others in the webring, especially your class?
I thought they were really informative. I didn't know a lot about druid healers, to be honest, and the thoughtfulness and complexitiy of their decision making processes for raid healing go into way more depth than resto shamans do.
As for my class, Resto Shammies had the lowest participation out of all the healing classes :(, which is unsurprising as resto shammies are the lowest represented healing class on the armory. I like the perspective of the other resto shammies, although most of them are 25 man healers, for which I'm not there. My favorite was probably Chayah, who if you're a shammy you're probably already familiar with from their amazing ZAP! spreadsheet.
5. If Yes to #4, did you learn anything that made you a better healer?
Like I mentioned, Chayah has an interesting perspective. Maybe it's cause of his dps background, but I liked his idea that mana at the end of a fight is useless. I don't really switch up my gear from fight to fight, but recently I have considered building different sets for different fights.
6. What tools/resources or information do you think you would need to improve as a healer and how could that help the community at large?
I'm going to echo Miss, and mention the lack of resto shammy healing blogs. I'd like to give a shout out to Rul, who I've recently added to my blogroll, who not only has great shaman healing ideas, but ALSO is in a 10-man strict guild, adding a little extra flavor.
7. What did you identify as your worst habit as a healer? Have you improved in this area?
I complained that I probably refreshed Riptide too early, but now with my Tier 10 2-piece set bonus, that's a FEATURE, not a BUG!
8. What did you list as your favorite healing spell and your least used healing spell for your class? Are these answers still true? If they have changed, what caused the change (i.e. patch fix, different healing environment, etc)?
Hmm, I did say Chain Heal back then, but like I said earlier, that has become much more situational in ICC. I gotta say with the new nummy set bonus, it's Riptide hands down. I've never been a fan of 6 second cooldowns; in fact I think I really stopped playing my Holy Priest over one, but with Riptide, it makes sense to me, somehow. Just a juicy spell with all sorts of awesome things that happen after you cast it.
My original answers are here, for reference.
1. Reread your original answers to the questions. With the benefit of hindsight, score your own work in terms of its cringeworthiness.
Hmm, I think when I look back on past-Zigi, I think "geez, you and Chain Heal should get a room already". Sure it's a great spell still, and probably still class-defining, but it was also made nearly unusable in many of the fights of the first wing of ICC. Spreading out on fights like Saurfang meant that your CH would often hit only one target, making it useless. In general, you're going to be spread out on other fights like Blood Princes, Failboat, and Marrowgar too. It's useless on Valithria of course, who isn't in your raid so won't get hit by it. It's still amazing on fights like Festergut and Blood Queen, but it certainly has struck out on a lot of ICC fights for me. This is especially painful as my totem and glyph are just wasted on these fights by association, but I'm too cheap to replace them for just those fights.
2. Has your class's healing improved in the area you identified as its weakest?
I identified mana usage as the biggest weakness, and when we were just beginning TOC I was living on my mana tide and potions. My gear has gotten a lot better since then, and there is a lot more raid damage (HELLOOO Blood Queen) giving me nearly limitless mana from my water shield.
What I would identify as our biggest weakness now is our lack of mobile healing. We have one spell to cast while moving (and don't get me wrong, I want to have Riptide's babies\), so when Riptide is on cooldown and you need to run off a nasty debuff, then you're kinda not doing anything for 6 seconds, eh?
3. Have you changed your "least favoured class to heal with"?
I selfishly said holy priests, because they don't offer any buffs for me personally that a disc priest doesn't provide. I like holy priests a lot more since a lot of them now take the Glyph of Guardian Spirit, which is an amazing talent. I have set foot in a few more 25 man raids, and I do realize now that it is a headache to have more than one disc priest, as they're constantly weakened-soul-blocking each other, without careful coordination.
4. Did you read the entries from others in the webring, especially your class?
I thought they were really informative. I didn't know a lot about druid healers, to be honest, and the thoughtfulness and complexitiy of their decision making processes for raid healing go into way more depth than resto shamans do.
As for my class, Resto Shammies had the lowest participation out of all the healing classes :(, which is unsurprising as resto shammies are the lowest represented healing class on the armory. I like the perspective of the other resto shammies, although most of them are 25 man healers, for which I'm not there. My favorite was probably Chayah, who if you're a shammy you're probably already familiar with from their amazing ZAP! spreadsheet.
5. If Yes to #4, did you learn anything that made you a better healer?
Like I mentioned, Chayah has an interesting perspective. Maybe it's cause of his dps background, but I liked his idea that mana at the end of a fight is useless. I don't really switch up my gear from fight to fight, but recently I have considered building different sets for different fights.
6. What tools/resources or information do you think you would need to improve as a healer and how could that help the community at large?
I'm going to echo Miss, and mention the lack of resto shammy healing blogs. I'd like to give a shout out to Rul, who I've recently added to my blogroll, who not only has great shaman healing ideas, but ALSO is in a 10-man strict guild, adding a little extra flavor.
7. What did you identify as your worst habit as a healer? Have you improved in this area?
I complained that I probably refreshed Riptide too early, but now with my Tier 10 2-piece set bonus, that's a FEATURE, not a BUG!
8. What did you list as your favorite healing spell and your least used healing spell for your class? Are these answers still true? If they have changed, what caused the change (i.e. patch fix, different healing environment, etc)?
Hmm, I did say Chain Heal back then, but like I said earlier, that has become much more situational in ICC. I gotta say with the new nummy set bonus, it's Riptide hands down. I've never been a fan of 6 second cooldowns; in fact I think I really stopped playing my Holy Priest over one, but with Riptide, it makes sense to me, somehow. Just a juicy spell with all sorts of awesome things that happen after you cast it.
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
To 4-piece or not to 4-piece?
It's decision time again, peoples. Back when I made my initial pull list, We were working on Saurfang, and I was considering the first 4 ICC bosses and thinking how underused Chain Heal was. At the time, I couldn't see the value in saving up 160 emblems on top of my 2 piece set bonus to complete the 4 piece set bonus, when I didn't feel like I was even casting Chain Heal that much.
Times have changed. 2 Wings later, we've seen fights like Festergut, Putricide, Blood Princes, and Blood Queen, which featured massive raid damage and pushed aoe healing demands to the limit. Also, early reports for HEP values for the 4 piece set bonus are showing up, and they are quite positive. One report puts it as high as 800 HEP!
I also finally had a full night just healing, so I had a log I felt comfortable passing through my shaman_hep for updated calculations. The summary is here, but the main takeaway is that I have HEP estimations for my trinkets now. My Ephemeral Snowflake clocked in at around 143 HEP for the night and the Sliver of Pure Ice clocked in at around 211 HEP. Their theoretical maximum HEP values are around 276 and 242, respectively, which may mean that I'm just not using the "Use:" effect on the Snowflake very wisely, and I'm using the Sliver's Use effect fairly well.
In either case I've decided to weigh the 4 piece set bonus at something like 400 HEP, until I hear some more concrete numbers. This still offsets the stat bonus of the non-set emblem purchases, so it definitely shifts up my pull list a lot. I won't actually be purchasing anything until I have enough emblems for both the chest and gloves, so I can go directly from tier 9.2 to tier 10.4, so if I find out soon that the numbers are not quite as good, I can change my plan accordingly. Here goes:
The bolded item costs means that I am factoring in part of a set bonus upgrade. The italicized item cost mean that they are primordial saronite costs, and can be bought with alts or money.
Happy hunting, Shaman.
Times have changed. 2 Wings later, we've seen fights like Festergut, Putricide, Blood Princes, and Blood Queen, which featured massive raid damage and pushed aoe healing demands to the limit. Also, early reports for HEP values for the 4 piece set bonus are showing up, and they are quite positive. One report puts it as high as 800 HEP!
I also finally had a full night just healing, so I had a log I felt comfortable passing through my shaman_hep for updated calculations. The summary is here, but the main takeaway is that I have HEP estimations for my trinkets now. My Ephemeral Snowflake clocked in at around 143 HEP for the night and the Sliver of Pure Ice clocked in at around 211 HEP. Their theoretical maximum HEP values are around 276 and 242, respectively, which may mean that I'm just not using the "Use:" effect on the Snowflake very wisely, and I'm using the Sliver's Use effect fairly well.
In either case I've decided to weigh the 4 piece set bonus at something like 400 HEP, until I hear some more concrete numbers. This still offsets the stat bonus of the non-set emblem purchases, so it definitely shifts up my pull list a lot. I won't actually be purchasing anything until I have enough emblems for both the chest and gloves, so I can go directly from tier 9.2 to tier 10.4, so if I find out soon that the numbers are not quite as good, I can change my plan accordingly. Here goes:
| Best Upgrade | HEP | Cost | HEP Upgrade per Badge | Current | HEP |
| Frost Witch's Handguards | 541.4 | 60 | 3.332 | Thrall's Handguards of Triumph | 341.4 |
| Frost Witch's Tunic | 785.7 | 95 | 2.98 | Thrall's Tunic of Conquest | 502 |
| Waistband of Despair | 491.8 | 60 | 2.89 | Darkspear Ritual Binding | 318 |
| Earthsoul Boots | 512.1 | 115 | 1.818 | Sabatons of Tortured Space | 302.9 |
| Drape of the Violet Tower | 289.7 | 50 | 1.791 | Shawl of the Caretaker | 200.2 |
| Purified Lunar Dust | 215.2 | 60 | 1.95 | Ephemeral Snowflake | 143.5 |
| Lightning-Infused Leggings | 679.3 | 184 | .0922 | Leggings of Concealed Hatred | 509.5 |
| Totem of Surging Seas | 255 | 30 | .7 | Totem of Calming Tides | 234 |
The bolded item costs means that I am factoring in part of a set bonus upgrade. The italicized item cost mean that they are primordial saronite costs, and can be bought with alts or money.
Happy hunting, Shaman.
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
I CAN HAZ DATAZ?
So I was going through my blog feeds, and I was sad to see that Olokoth's old blog that dealt with data mined from the armory was dead. I did some googling and found a new blog, that does the same thing, and quite well. I'm kind of totally obsessed.
Their methodology is basically that they have a script that goes through all level 80 characters on the armory, and looks at their spec, and then counts them. The data is then broken down, and you can get all sorts of neat view on the data, broken down by class, race, spec, etc.
They acknowledge that their methodology is somewhat flawed in that:
Still, it's a pretty fun look at the data. Shaman are one of the lowest represented class, although Resto is by far the most popular spec. Elemental is more popular than Enhancement, which surprises me for some reason.
I especially like some of the Shaman specific data. I always wondered how many people were taking things like Improved Reincarnation. I guess now we know: 13%.
Their methodology is basically that they have a script that goes through all level 80 characters on the armory, and looks at their spec, and then counts them. The data is then broken down, and you can get all sorts of neat view on the data, broken down by class, race, spec, etc.
They acknowledge that their methodology is somewhat flawed in that:
- They only look at active spec.
- They don't distinguish between 2 different types of the same spec (feral kitty is counted the same as feral bear).
- There's no filter for completely inactive level 80 toons.
- There's no attempt to separate PvP data from PvE
Still, it's a pretty fun look at the data. Shaman are one of the lowest represented class, although Resto is by far the most popular spec. Elemental is more popular than Enhancement, which surprises me for some reason.
I especially like some of the Shaman specific data. I always wondered how many people were taking things like Improved Reincarnation. I guess now we know: 13%.
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Updating Solarian Macros on Deathwhisper for the Lazy Shaman?
So back in my day when we had to walk up the hills in outlands both ways to get to school or something there was a boss in Tempest Keep called High Astromancer Solarian. During one of her phases, the only unavoidable damage came from a randomly targeted arcane missles. Healers that were assigned to that damage would target her and use a macro like
/cast [help,nodead][target=targettarget,help,nodead] Lesser Healing Wave
Now, Lady Deathwhisper is not a hard healing fight, and the majority of damage probably comes from the empowered adds and the Death and Decay. Still, I think tonight when my guild does her, I'm going to try using a macro like the Solarian macro to heal the random damage (when there's no other major death and decay or add damage to heal). I think I'm going to try:
/castsequence [help,nodead][target=targettarget,help,nodead] Riptide, Lesser Healing Wave, Lesser Healing Wave
So I don't think it's that big a deal actually (and I'll probably have to insert some filler heals to get over the riptide cooldown), but that fight is so boring to heal in the first phase I feel like tweaking my macro mid fight may give me something to do tonight ;). I'll let you know how it works out.
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Sticking to the plan?
So I've been pretty much going along with the planned pull list I laid out about a month ago. I got my shoulders first, which were a solid upgrade, are nearly best in slot for the content I do, and look awesome. The next piece according to my plan was the helm. The thing is, 95 emblems is a lot. A lot a lot. I've been on vacation so I haven't gotten my weekly and dailies in as much as I'd like. So I'm only at like 70 emblems now, and last night, and the Ice-Reinforced Vrykul Helm drops! Clear upgrade, and great itemization, but it leaves me in a bit of a quandary...
I really was hoping to get the helm, so I could run with 2 pieces of tier 9 and 2 pieces of tier 10. The T9-2 and T10-2 set bonuses have great synergy, and the helm and gloves are the best pieces, stat-wise, if you're only going to pick 2 pieces; the legs and gloves have horrible stats for a resto shaman, and the chest is nice, but the cloth non-tier emblem chest is MUCH better.
So do I:
Still haven't decided, but I gotta make a decision this week I guess... I guess I shouldn't complain- upgrades are always a good thing ;)
I really was hoping to get the helm, so I could run with 2 pieces of tier 9 and 2 pieces of tier 10. The T9-2 and T10-2 set bonuses have great synergy, and the helm and gloves are the best pieces, stat-wise, if you're only going to pick 2 pieces; the legs and gloves have horrible stats for a resto shaman, and the chest is nice, but the cloth non-tier emblem chest is MUCH better.
So do I:
- Stick with the plan?
I'll just keep this helm as an intermediate until I get 25 more emblems or so? - Change up the plan?
The only other tier piece I could get is the chest really, which would break my t9 set bonus. This is something I'd have to do eventually I guess, although a lot of shaman on EJ are really hanging onto that set bonus. - Wait?
Do I just hold off on acquiring 2 pieces of tier, and use my frost emblems in other slots that are sure-things? This would be the belt, and cloak.
Still haven't decided, but I gotta make a decision this week I guess... I guess I shouldn't complain- upgrades are always a good thing ;)
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
Zigi's Law #2
Still on vacation, so I haven't been playing much, but I did get on a little to show my ex-WoW player cousins the new dungeons and gear, and I came up with this axiom.
So yeah my cousins think I'm mental now. Thanks blizz.
The shaman T10 deer shoulder will never have the visual proc when someone is watching your screen and you're talking about how cool they are. As soon as they look away, the shoulders will proc like crazy.
So yeah my cousins think I'm mental now. Thanks blizz.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
